A Revision of my Short Term Goals

This was something that I decided on around 3 weeks back - but never posted. My initial ambition was to target the full marathon in Mumbai in 2010. But, then a combination of new knowledge, and experience, illumined me and made me introspect on whether this made sense. Some of these included the following thoughts-

1. I was going to at-best be a struggling 5 hour plus finisher. I was not sure whether I wanted to go through my first marathon as a supreme struggle. I actually wanted to finish happy, and in good time

2. There was definitely a greater risk of injury in attempting a marathon without building atleast a base of 12 - 18 months of solid running. This was an extremely important consideration for me. I did not want to get injured and be off running for a long period

3. I realized that even in terms of a half marathon, I still had a very long way to go in my training. With my current speed and stamina, it looks like I would be a 2 hours 25 minutes finisher. I thought I should first see if could shave off atleast 15 minutes off this before the Delhi Half Marathon in November. And then, work towards doing a sub-2 hour half marathon sometime next year

Hence, I decided that I would seriously start working towards a marathon only sometime in 2010. Before that, I want to crack a half marathon within 2 hours. Does this all sound presumptous for a guy who is actually yet to race a half marathon...yes! But then..what the heck!!

Hence my new goals are to do 4 half marathons in 4 months.

November' 09 - Delhi

December' 09 - Singapore

January' 10 - Mumbai

February' 10 - Hong Kong

It is now a question of ramping up my running speed. My longest run to date is 15 km, and in terms of distance I am almost there. Should be hitting 18 Km by mid-August. Therefore, what I am going to focus on over the next 3- 6 months is on speed and strength. Hopefully, this should help me increase my average running speed to around 10 Km / Hour from my current 9.1 Km / Hour